Four teams, in four days, play four Xbox games

MICROSOFT IS RUNNING a cute competition at GDC, write a game for the XBox in four days. Four teams, four days, four games. Oh yeah, they are also doing it in the lobby of the North Hall so everyone can watch, poke and prod, we think this was just to be mean.

Basically, that is the whole idea, sit teams of one or two people down and have them write something from scratch in four days. The winner gets lot of goodies, fame and most likely a job writing games.

The teams are Benjamin Nietsche and Christoph Rienaecker from Germany as team one and Andre Furtado from Brazil as team two. Team three is Josh Butterworth from the UK and four is Jonathon Stevens and Patrick Glanville both of the US. Pictured is three and four on the left and right.

Watching people code from afar is about as exciting as televised political debates, there is a lot of nothing going on relevant to the average person, but much is made of it. It is a great idea, and MS is doing a good thing, but coding will never be an observer sport. µ